Earth: Mostly Harmless

What’s the frequency, Kwik Fit?

News from Edinburgh: sorry folks, switch off your radios at work. The copyright mafia has made us an offer we can’t refuse…

I don’t actually have the words to describe how stupid this is, but I hope you like this picture:

Yeah.

BBC coverage Gizmodo coverage

And right on cue… …a massive abuse of copyright legislation.

CD-Wow, the popular online music retailer has been ordered to pay £41m compensation to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for… buying CDs in Hong Kong and selling them to UK customers, in violation of its 2004 undertaking not to do so.

Hang on a minute. These are legal, legitimate CDs - I know because I’ve bought a few myself.

CD-Wow does, then, pay whatever royalties are due wherever they source the discs from as part of their purchase price. And the CDs, being legitimate, were released by the very record companies themselves (perhaps not the same subsidiary, but branches legally entitled to release the records nonetheless).

So who exactly is getting scammed by CD-Wow’s practices? No-one. And as for the ruling - sounds like it’s the consumer, as usual.

Why do people buy from CD-Wow? Because it’s cheaper. And they’re buying legally, at a time when the music industry is continuing to moan about ‘piracy’. CD-Wow were certainly in breach of the 2004 agreement, but that agreement was an extremely stupid precedent.

The BPI claims that CD-Wow’s tactics undermine “the legitimate businesses of UK retailers and record companies”. I’d like to say a few things on that.

• Your failed business model is not my problem.
• I, as the consumer, should be the judge of retail value, rather than having it decided for me by a cartel
• CD-Wow were among the cheapest retailers. You couldn’t compete. Why should I care?
• Evidently, the music industry charges different prices around the world for a (bit-for-bit) identical product. Silly, but fair enough if people are willing (and foolish enough) to pay the higher prices. But in no way should rights groups be able to stop people importing cheaper-sourced ones abroad.

If someone could please explain to me how the 2004 ruling and its subsequent enforcement possibly advance the free market and/or benefits the consumer in any way, shape or form, I positively beg them to explain it to me.

Answers on a locally sourced cartel-authorized postcard please.

Lawrence Lessig’s other court case

A remarkable turn of events in a case I sadly wasn’t aware of before this article was published. It involves Larry Lessig, founder of the Creative Commons project, who is currently pursuing a negligence action on behalf of a former pupil of the American Boychoir School, where Lessig himself was evidently abused as a boy. The article linked to below also includes a profile of the reluctant public figure that is Harvard Law’s star professor. At times it is biting in criticism of Lessig’s intellectual record but is nonetheless generally affectionate towards him. Worth a read.

Lawrence Lessig’s other court case:

A dramatic update on Professor Lawrence Lessig’s other court case written by his friend John Heilemann appears in New York Metro magazine this week. And this is a battle that critics as well as supporters are praying will end in victory for the lawyer and scholar this time.

Lessig is representing John Hardwicke, who like himself is a former pupil of the American Boychoir School (now the Columbus Boychoir School) in Princeton, New Jersey. Hardwicke claims he was abused by multiple staff including the music director. The school argued it should be immune from such negligence lawsuits, and a trial court had agreed. Incredibly, the school even claimed the sex between now fugitive choir director and Hardwicke was consensual. The case was heard by the state’s supreme court, and in what reads like a movie script, the evidence turned on Lessig himself.

In the court room, Lessig tore up the rule book and confronted years of private torment by revealing that he had been abused himself at the school.

“It was the perversion of this music director . . . to believe that sexual abuse was part of producing a wonderful boychoir,” he disclosed to the court. Lessig said he knew that this was what the director believed, because the director himself had disclosed this to Lessig at the school.

(Via The Register.)